I haven’t posted for a few years now. In fact it’s almost as if High&Dry just kinda got folded together like a paper dirigible, set down briefly in the river, and just about immediately grounded on a bank. I let it go. I imagine many blogs, many enterprises, many dreams, and quite a few random other things, go this way too: High on initial enthusiasm, Low on follow-through.
I first thought of this as an idea when I was broke, finally launched it as a blog when I wasn’t broke, but still feeling kind of identified with Brokeness in this not entirely healthy romantic way, and soon let it go as other things popped into my life that seemed more important.
But I’m thinking again about this. Thinking about how people live with different amounts of money, and thinking about how easy it is to to get caught up in Making a Living and loose sight of that great feeling of appreciation one can get when one doesn’t have very much then suddenly gets a Little Bit More. I was thinking, don’t ask me why, about very wealthy people one day, and wondering how challenging it must be to appreciate anything, and how sad it would be to be in this state.
I realized that there are actually two economies operating side by side, the economies of Worth and Value; that is, these are two different things, dictionaries aside.
Let’s say you have a $10 bill. How much is it worth? Well, $10. But what’s the value of that $10? Depends on the person and the situation. It depends on how you spend it and what it means to you. To a very rich person, that $10 might be valuable, in the way a brick in wall is valuable, for without that brick you have a hole in the wall, but there are others to take its place easily enough should one brick crumble or whathaveyou. Or it might be valuable in the way a human body cell is valuable; we need them, because we “are” them in a sense, but we can afford to lose a few here and there, and of course we do all the time. But to someone who’s broke, who found that $10 lying on the street, that $10 can potentially mean a whole lot more. So for another example, I don’t think you can really measure the value of a diamond, only its worth, because the value of that diamond depends very much on the sentiments of the owner.
So a High&Dry way to look at your life is like this: Not “How can I get more,” but “How can I get more appreciation out of what I’ve already got?”